Simple things are often the hardest to master. Oil and vinegar are two liquids with divergent properties that do not mix under most conditions. Fish use air dissolved in water to breathe but tiny air bubbles are difficult to mix in large quantities in water. One way to mix fluids is to create dynamic mixing systems that require external energy, such as the use of a pump or a propeller to force fluids to mix. In many instances the use of a dynamic mixing system needing external energy is not the optimal solution for a mixing process. In most cases, use of external energy results in heating the fluids, deterioration of the mixing device, maintaining the external system, etc. Many industrial applications benefit from static mixing, which is mixing that uses only static or kinetic energy from the fluids themselves.
Many material processes and technologies require mixing. Air and fuel are mixed in the pistons of an automotive engine, fertilizer and water are mixed during the irrigation of land, medication is mixed with serum in hospitals, turbulent air bubbles are mixed with polluted water in water purification systems, hot water is mixed with cold water in cooking devices, fuel and oxidants are mixed in rocket reactors, recycled air and fresh, incoming air is mixed in aeration systems, chemicals are mixed in tanks during chemical processes, nitrogen gas is mixed into fertilizer to improve the output of plant food, water is given new properties via gasification to prevent seeping into soil by oxygenation of water, oil is separated from water via turbulent mixing processes, foam is created via high-intensity gasification of a fluid, emulsion results from unique conditions of mixing, and washing is based on dispersion of a liquid in air, to name only a few. The current technology relates to mixing technology in general and applies more specifically to any process or system where mixing of fluids is found.
Mixing processes, like other processes within systems, are now being scrutinized and redesigned to enable energy and cost savings. Improved static or dynamic mixing helps reduce the energy consumption of a device or process using the improved mixing. A static device that relies on the pressure level of pressurized incoming fluid, when made more efficient, results in less pressure to operate or creates a mixed fluid with a greater output pressure. The same improved static mixer may create less friction and may limit molecular disruption within the fluid. What is needed is a simple, energy- and cost-efficient, compact static mixer capable of improved mixing of fluids.
Energy is consumed when a static mixer includes revolving or moving parts. Energy is also consumed when a static mixer shuffles and directs fluids away from their primary flows into baffles or other deviations. What is needed is a static mixer with no moving parts capable of enhanced mixing without requiring major alterations to the flows of liquids.
Mixing of fluids and mixing in the industrial and chemical industries, because of the nature and properties of these fluids, may be directed to a simply controlled, single-stage process where fluid properties are largely kept unchanged or fluids are mixed over several stages using different levels and types of mixing. For example, to purify water, several stages of cleaning may be required. In a first stage, mixing uses large air bubbles to segregate large particles from water, and in a subsequent stage, smaller bubbles are used to activate and aerate water. What is needed is a mixer, a system of mixing, and a method of mixing capable of easy adaptation to mix fluids in a single- or multistage mixing process and to mix fluids at different velocities with bubbles or laminar flow of different sizes and thicknesses.
This disclosure incorporates fully herein by reference International Application No. PCT/US2009/033005, entitled Dynamic Mixing of Fluids, and International Application No. PCT/US2009/033000, entitled Method of Dynamic Mixing Fluids. This first family of mixing technologies and devices teaches how two or more fluids, each traveling in different and often opposite directions in conduits, are mixed using reflector-based technology in a quasi-boiling expansion volume. Mixing results from the merging of two fluids in a phase change at the mixing point.
This disclosure also incorporates fully herein by reference International Application No. PCT/US2008/075378, entitled Foaming of Liquids. This second family of devices teaches how gas bubbles are created and released into an open volume of fluid. Compressed air is split into small flows and is directed sideways into a cavity where liquid is drawn in via forced convection to mix or where radial fins under the flow of incoming bubbles impart a rapid rotational movement and create a vortex in the open volume of fluid.
What is needed is an improved mixing device capable of creating an auto-initiating vortex and self-sustaining vortex without using moving parts in the mixing device. What is also needed is a device capable of creating a multilayered vortex with stratified portions where fluid and layers of bubbles hash for better mixing under conditions of high turbulence.